Chapter 6

Looking Big in the Twenty-First Century Global Business

We know that many entrepreneurs started businesses in the basements of their homes, in their apartments, and—for student entrepreneurs—in their doom rooms. These start-ups faced many challenges during their early stages—challenges such as how to compete against bigger, established companies with huge resources. The ability of smaller companies to compete with these bigger, established companies lies in their creative resourcefulness.

A major creative resourcefulness by smaller companies is the strategic development of virtual networks, partnerships, licensing, and outsourcing in various strategic alliances to accomplishing set-out goals. Also, resourcefulness in bootstrapping your way to a competitive growth will help you better direct your limited resources to areas that help in your strategic alliances.

Creating virtual, strategic alliances allows the entrepreneur to become one of the industry players with limited resources and little overhead. Entrepreneurs in R&D, distribution, retailing, and other types of businesses can create the illusion of largeness by building virtual companies. Customers tend to see virtual companies as established suppliers of goods and services, when in reality, virtual companies can be operated from any location on earth as long as the entrepreneur is strategically linked to the network simply by modern technologies such as phone, fax, e-mail, and Internet............

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